Some of my more observant readers may haven noticed that when I was pregnant with Lucie we announced her name as Lucie Adelaide. In fact, there is a blog category with that label because I filed her ultrasound pictures under that name. When she was born, however, we gave her a much longer and fuller name: Lucia Marie Adelaide.

Today I am going to tell you how that came to be.

One year ago I was at the end of yet another summer third trimester. In the years since Kenna died, the end of pregnancy has grown in stress in anxiety. Each time I think to myself, I've done this before....I shouldn't still be worried...but I don't think that is realistically the sort of thing that a person just forgets. Not to mention, I knew that paying attention and my anxieties, may have in fact saved Logan from the same fate.

As August turned and I looked at the calendar, I noticed something that distressed me even more...the calendar. It was a silly thing to be so worked up about, really, but all of the dates from 2007 and 2012 lined up. The day Kenna died, the day I was induced, the day she was born...they were all on the same day of the week in 2007 they had been 2012. Every year I relive those days, and this year, pregnant I would be reliving them in a weird sort of time warp.

I panicked. Seriously, you can ask my OB. I freaked out like a raving hormonal lunatic.

He was kind of sort of patient with me and assured me that we would be monitoring like crazy and that since I would be 37 weeks at that time I might not even be pregnant since my last two babies had been born at 36. He assured me at 37 weeks we could do an induction anyways, but then I freaked out about that because I wouldn't want to be in the hospital in those days...or pregnant. It was kind of a lose- lose scenario from that perspective really.

Really the truth of all of it is that it was just a stressful time in general. Lucie was the grad school baby we never really meant to have and while we were both excited about my pregnancy and impending birth, being pregnant at that time was more stressful even than we anticipated it might be. We also knew that Tim would be teaching fall semester, in addition to finishing his own classroom work and starting his dissertation, and we were trying not to worry about all of that.

By August 15th, I was still not really feeling it. The stress and worry was eating me alive. On August 15th, 2012 before the Mass for the Solemnity of the Assumption, as I was praying...begging really to be relieved from this awful panic and dread and worry that was consuming me... I suddenly felt this new sense of calm.

Everything was going to be ok.

I felt it physically, like a burden was being fully removed from me. I seriously can't even describe what this felt like and it was so fast, happening in just an instant.

It was just a small thing, really, nothing miraculous for anyone but me. Nothing I figured other people would probably put much stock in. It isn't even really much to write about.

Tim and I, however, needed to talk about names.

I wanted to replace Lucie Adelaide with Lucia Marie in honor of this great Marian feast day and my newfound lightness, but continue to call her Lucie (with an -ie to make it 5 letters, which is a topic for another post). Tim, however, was adamant that we keep the Adelaide as our first child name that acknowledged to my name. Caleb shares Tim's middle name and Logan's middle name is Tim's first name, but we had never used any part of my name. Adelaide is the English version of Edelheid, which is what all Heidi's were called prior to Joanna Spyri's popularization of the shortened form. It was a stretch, but it was also what we could agree on.

We briefly discussed dropping the Lucie/Lucia and just giving her a Marian variation as her first name but that didn't seem right, either.

Eventually we settled on Lucia Marie as her full first name and Adelaide as her middle name. It is a big name for such a little girl, but she wears it well. We have since discovered more than a couple fun connections to her name, did you know that St. Juan Diego's wife took the Christian name Maria Lucia at her baptism? The things you learn from Holy Heroes.... Kylee has become quite taken with Lucia, one of the three children to witness the appearances of Our Lady of Fatima....later in her life she became Sister Maria Lucia. We have found a few other interesting connections too, and the older kids are always on the lookout for Lucia sightings.

Maybe this is all the silly ramblings of a crazy lady, a bunch of random connections put together to be interesting. Who knows, maybe it all means nothing.

I, however, happen to believe that heaven has great plans for this little girl...or perhaps for our family through this little girl. Aidan is fond of pointing out that she is the only cradle Catholic among us. To me she is just such a joyful and happy baby, I can't imagine our family without her!

3 comments
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I totally get this, as I'm leaning heavily on Our Lady for peace from my anxiety this time around. I never imagined how nerve-wracking this would be. Not announcing her name yet, but Mary will definitely be honored. It was sooooo great seeing you a couple of weekends ago. If ya'll are ever up our way, we'd love to have you.

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